In a lecture delivered on Monday by the Romanian Academy, historian Ioan-Aurel Pop, the rector of Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, offers a history lesson to the Hungarians, who have not stopped and probably will never stop dreaming oabout autonomy within the Romanian state.

We reproduce, below, the explanations of Professor Ioan-Aurel Pop:

The Transylvania Union Decision with Romania, adopted on 1 December 1918, contains nine points, which have the following ideas in their center:

1. The National Assembly of all Romanians from Transylvania, Banat and Hungary decreed the unification of these Romanians and the territories they inhabited with Romania.
2. Reserve the territories indicated above for provisional autonomy until the assembly is established.

• The basic principles for the composition of the new Romanian state are issued.

1. The Peace Congress is required to ensure the justice and freedom of all large and small nations and to eliminate the war in international relations.
2. It addresses a greeting to the “brothers of Bucovina”, who had united with Romania three days before.
3. The nations liberated from the Austro-Hungarian yoke are welcomed.

• The memory of Romanian heroes sacrificed for the freedom and unity of the Romanian nation is honored.
• It is thanks to the Allied Powers (Entente) for the civilization of the “claws of barbarity” has escaped.

1. It is decided to establish the Great Romanian National Council as a representative of the “Romanian nation of Transylvania, Banat and the Hungarian Land”.

The only one of the nine articles that has sub-points (six) is the third one. These six sub-points concretize state-building principles: the national freedom of “co-inhabiting peoples”; the religious confession of all praise in the state; universal, equal, direct and secret vote for both sexes from 21 years of age; freedom of the press, association, assembly and thought; radical agrarian reform; rights to industrial labor equivalent to those of the most advanced states in the West. The term autonomy is used twice in the text of that resolution. The first use appears at the beginning of the act, namely in Article II: “The National Assembly reserves the indicated territories (Transylvania, Banat and the Hungarian Land1) provisional autonomy until the Constitution meets elected on the basis of the universal vote.” As we can see, it is about the decree of the autonomy of the territories inhabited mostly by the Romanians, united with Romania (about 100,000 square km), territories regarded in their entirety.

Secondly, even in these territories, the Assembly proposed provisional autonomy, only until the assembly, elected by universal suffrage, intended to give the Kingdom of Romania a new Constitution.  All these provisions have been broadly respected, and Transylvania with the Banat and the Western Parties have definitively fallen into Romania, without any autonomy, only after a period of time has elapsed. The first and most important decision of the National Assembly was not the provisional autonomy of the province (provinces), with the “decree” of their union with Romania. The nodal point of the document is precisely the unification of the respective Romanians and the mentioned territories with Romania. And this union was “decreed” by the 1228 delegates, democratically elected and possessors of official documents (“credentials”), representatives of all Romanians concerned. It is true that the decision-makers of the union, to their honor, deal extensively with the national and confessional minorities in Transylvania and their fate in the Kingdom of Romania, because the Romanians did not want to turn from oppressed to oppressors. Between the “fundamental principles of the constitution of the new Romanian state”, the National Assembly established: “full national freedom for all cohabiting peoples” and “equal justification and full confessional autonomy for all confessions in the state”. “Full national freedom” is clearly explained, without the possibility of parallel interpretations, and meant for the authors of the Resolution the right of the “cohabiting peoples” to “train, administer and judge in their own language”, “to be represented in the legislative bodies” of Romania, to be represented in the government of the country. The term “autonomous” is here an adjective and refers to “all confessions in the state” and not just to the denominations of minorities.

What comments can be made on this document, from the perspective of a century’s development?

1. Nowhere in the text of the Resolution is any reference to the autonomy of any part of Transylvania according to ethnic criteria. In other words, the “historical autonomies” of Transylvania, including the “Szeklerland”, had been abolished by the Austro-Hungarian dualist state (more precisely by the parliament and the government of Budapest) in the second half of the nineteenth century.
2. The largest minority in Romania are the Hungarians (representing more than 6% of the country’s population), they can “train” in their own language on the territory of Romania, ranging from kindergarten to university, at bachelor, master and doctoral levels.
3. The same Hungarian minority can be “administered” in its own language wherever it has the simple majority and where the governing bodies, from mayors to the members of local councils, etc. are Hungarian. There is no mixed locality in Romania where minorities are not represented by vote, depending on the number.
4. The same Hungarian minority can “judge” in its own language where the conditions required by law are met. Any member of the Hungarian minority can speak before the Hungarian courts, assuring him, if necessary, a translator.

The resolution of the National Assembly does not “decree”, that is, decides only one thing, which is capital, namely, the union of Transylvania with Romania. Otherwise, he makes proposals to respect the “new Romanian state”, from which he decided that the mentioned territories should be part of. The Romanian state, both in the interwar period and afterwards, has largely and in line with the political regimes respected these proposals to respect the rights of minorities.

In other words, the moral right of the Hungarian minority leaders in Romania to question the Romanian state authorities about the full implementation of the union resolution of 1 December 1918 in Alba Iulia remains questionable for a very simple reason. The Hungarians, in their position as a global community, have never recognized the unification of Transylvania with Romania, explicitly and unequivocally, as did the Saxons, Swabians, Ukrainians, Roma, etc. What this means? It means the non-acceptance of the “Decree” of December 1, 1918, issued by the absolute majority of the population of Transylvania, in accordance with all the international provisions then in force and ratified by the Paris Peace Conference of 1919-1920, then revalidated at the Peace Conference 1946-1947, recognized by other documents of international legal value, both before and after 1989. In this case, the leaders of the Hungarian community who agreed and agree with this position (not all Hungarians!) Lie not only outside the Romanian laws but also outside the international ones, and are not allowed to invoke a document that they do not accept in their essence. In other words, you can not take the resolution of the Alba Iulia Assembly just what you like. But even so, by pro-domo pleading, as it has been seen, Hungarian leaders are mistaken: this statement, which is legally binding only on the Union, does not foresee any autonomy for ethnic minorities in Transylvania. ”

Source:EVZ